What you see
by mellarkymia
Summary: Katniss and Peeta spend a rainy afternoon drawing. And they learn a little bit more about each other in the process. Canon. Pre-epilogue. Written for Prompts in Panem Round 6 Day 2: Orange


"Okay," Peeta says, his voice gentle as he looks down at the parchment. "What is it?"

Katniss furrows her brow. What kind of a question is that? Isn't it obvious?

"It's a tree," she tells him, her tone clipped.

She gestures the table, her fingers brushing against the charcoal-lined paper. She smears it, just slightly. She frowns.

Peeta doesn't respond for a while. He carefully studies the image she's sketched out, his eyes flitting over hastily drawn lines and curves and blurred blobs that form together in her best attempt at art.

"A tree," he says, slowly, the words tumbling off his lips, falling somewhere between a question and a statement.

Katniss feels the anger bubbling up in her. Because she knows this is Peeta's way of dodging the responsibility that comes with giving her his opinion.

Without looking at her, he nods slowly, though his words don't match the motion. "It's orange."

She doesn't want to tell him that the reason her awful tree, that barely looks like a tree at all, is orange is because she thought the piece of charcoal was brown when she picked it up. And her pride had prevented her from scrapping the drawing, from starting over, from asking her for the right color once she'd put color to paper.

So she narrows her gaze at him, instead.

"Peeta," she growls, exasperated, as pangs of uncomfortable nerves twisting their way through her stomach. "This was your stupid idea, anyway."

And it had been; a casual suggestion. A way to keep away the boredom on the third rainy day in a row. His attempt at staving off the doldrums that always hit her when she's cooped up in the house too long.

His gaze lifts off the paper, only for a moment, to stare at her; the blue sees is light, friendly, inquisitive. "Wait, what?"

Katniss folds her arms against her chest and leans back in the dining table chair in one rough movement, biting her lip as she glares at him. "Arts and crafts, or whatever you want to call it."

She shoots a glance at the piece he crafted so effortlessly; a round, dark grey flower, with a delicate green stem and a handful of thorns, floating serenely in a bowl-like vase. He drew it without a visual aid - like this impossibly peaceful image just existed somewhere in his mind, and only required his talented hand to bring it to life.

It's infuriating.

"It's not like I know what I'm doing," she says, before she realizes she's saying it. "You can't just hand someone a piece of charcoal and say, 'here, make art.'"

Peeta raises his eyebrows, looking genuinely surprised at how upset she is, which only serves to make her angrier.

"You've been doing this forever, and you're just _good_ at it. Of course yours is amazing."

"Katniss –" He starts in, a mea culpa that gets cut short as she continues on without pause.

"I didn't even want to do this," she says, a cool bite to her tone. "What's the point?"

Peeta holds his hand up, as though he's surrendering under her anger. The patient look in his eye – the one he's had so often since they got back to Twelve – gives her pause.

"I like the tree," he tells her quietly.

"The _orange_ tree?" She mutters, voice thick with disdain.

"The orange tree," he confirms with a gentle nod, sliding the paper closer to him so he can study it more carefully.

"I like the trunk. It looks old, sturdy. Like it's weathered a lot."

"It looks like a 5-year-old drew a rectangle wrong," she interjects bitterly.

He answers with a smile. "I like how the branches go out in every direction. Like they're caught in a wind storm.

Even though they're bending, they look… strong."

She sighs lightly, her cheeks tinged red, as he calls out the details she'd painstakingly added.

Because her tree isn't much of a tree, rough and haphazard, crafted by unpracticed, uncertain hands. But she made it – risked a lack of knowledge and confidence. And she can't explain why, but as she looks down at it, she feels like it's a part of them somehow. The stupid tree she didn't even want to draw.

"It doesn't have any leaves," he states, and she knows it's a question.

And she doesn't tell him that when she passes the trees nowadays, as their leaves, dry and vibrant, flutter to the ground, all she can think of is him.

How he's laid bare to her now, like the branches of those trees. How all his secrets are hers.

With a shrug, she traces the thin lines where the twigs of the branches end. "Well, a lot of trees don't this time of year. There are some in the woods. They look just like that."

He grins. And then his hand isn't resting on the table anymore, but cupping over hers, covering it with steady warmth.

"I like being able to see what the world looks like to you," he tells her. "It's beautiful."

Katniss looks at him, then, sees how much he means the words he just said. And so she means it when she offers him a wary smile.

"Well, I like yours, too," she admits, tilting a head toward his picture. "Where did you see it?"

"I didn't," he says, and there's a smile in his voice as he answers. "At least, not exactly."

She gives him a quizzical look in response. And she looks once more at the image, marveling at the contrast between the fierce, protective thorns, the delicate petals, the lithe but robust stem, the calm water.

He speaks simply, quietly, a hint of shyness in his eyes, as he shrugs. "It's what you look like to me."

-end-


End file.
